Dear Editor:
On Robbie Burns Day (Jan. 25) this year, as it feels like we are a world at war, communities are in conflict, tension writ large is present on many levels.
Burns’ poem A Man’s a Man for A’ That feels appropriate (I apologize for the gendered language – let us read “a man” as meaning “a human being” as Burns would surely say if he were writing today).
I will not apologize for the Scots’ dialect, because the working class feel of the vocabulary and speech fit well with Burns’ call to humanity.
Here are stanzas 1, 2, and 5.
Is there for honest overty
That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that.
Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man’s a Man for a’ that:
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that;
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that. …
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that,)
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that,
That Man to Man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.
May we agree to live in honesty and without show, so that with human beings over all the Earth we would see each other as fellow citizens of the world, for all that, and all that.
Peter Bush,
Fergus